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>The New Yorker: "The Woman of the House" by William Trevor

>The New Yorker could do a lot worse than to publish a William Trevor story, so I was happy to see this one, and I believe it is one of the best stories of the year. The woman of the title is a cousin of a crippled man, and they live together on his farm out of convenience. She takes care of him, and also skims a little cash from the household accounts. They live on his pension, which is enough, but still they scrape by. The man hires two young men who he thinks are Polish to paint the outside of the house.

The woman objects, but she is resigned to the bargain he has struck. But the painters are forced away by rain and when they come back, the man is nowhere to be found and the woman is somehow different. They suspect that she has killed him but kept it quiet in order to keep receiving his pension, and indeed the reader suspects the same. The story is told in alternating voices. First the painters and then the woman, Martina, and both sections beautifully render their awkward circumstances. The men are in fact not Polish, but are Gypsies (or, rather, they are stateless survivors of “Carinthia” who are “now regarded as Gypsies). They don’t trust the local tinkers, and seem to be honest, hard workers, although they have taken on this painting job without knowing the first thing about it. And the woman’s situation is clearly difficult, without money of her own, allowing the grocer to take liberties with her so that she can save money on provisions.

“The woman’s history was not theirs to know, even though they now were part of it themselves. Their circumstances made them that, as hers made her what she’d become.”

About

Clifford Garstang is a fiction writer and former international lawyer. His first novel, THE SHAMAN OF TURTLE VALLEY, will be published in May 2019. His novel in stories, WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW, won the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. He is also the author of a story collection, IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY, and the editor of three anthologies, EVERYWHERE STORIES: SHORT FICTION FROM A SMALL PLANET, Volumes I, II, and III.

Cliff's Upcoming Events

Fiction: Seeking New Lives, ElsewhereFriday, 22 March 2019 12:00Cliff will be moderating a panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book featuring Marina Perezagua (The Story of H), Chris@ Central JMRL Library, Charlottesville

High Road FestivalSaturday, 23 March 2019 Cliff will be speaking at Press 53's High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction in Winston-Salem, NC.@ Marriott Hotel, Winston-Salem NC

AWP Conference Wednesday, 27 March 2019 Cliff will be signing books during the Book Fair at the AWP Conference in Portland OR and will otherwise be around the P